Roman Reigns opened up about the physical demands of both his WWE career and his upcoming role as Akuma in the *Street Fighter* movie during a new interview with Men’s Health.
Reigns, who appears on the cover of the magazine’s latest issue, discussed how his training has become increasingly customized around the wear and tear he experiences throughout the year. Rather than following the same routine regardless of his condition, Reigns said his approach depends heavily on how his body is responding at any given time.
“It’s a total custom job and I think for each individual it has to be that way depending on where you’re at within your physical life. You know what you’ve done athletically, what your job is and what your demand and what you’re asking your body to do,” Reigns said.
“So, yeah for me I think the custom portion comes into how is my body feeling? What are my injuries? Am I nicked up? Do I have a little nagging, things from the ring that are bothering me? So that’s where I have to look at where I’m at in each quarter of the year and like this elbow is banged up, but the shoulders are feeling good.”
Reigns pointed to the period following Survivor Series: WarGames last November as an example. He said his elbows were badly beaten up coming out of the event, with the lingering issues affecting his training throughout December and into the 2026 Royal Rumble.
“We have to try to target where I feel good and try to push. But sometimes we get to a place where we just feel good and that’s how it happened. My elbows were really beat up in December coming out of Survivor Series in November,” Reigns said.
“By the time I got to (Royal) Rumble in January, we were just barely getting them back to normal. My training struggled that whole time and I was coming out of a non-diet phase too out of the holidays.”
The former Undisputed WWE Champion added that the discomfort prevented him from reaching his normal training intensity until the issues were properly addressed through rehabilitation.
“I just couldn’t get to that intensity and that locked in focus just perfect structure because I was nagged by, was just hurting. Finally once we got that all figured out and rehabbed right, started feeling good, started training hard and now I’m really starting to put it back together,” Reigns said.
“So it’s one of those things that I think you just have to be intuitive. You have to listen to your body if you’re committed to this and this is an annual thing. You’re running this year around. You really need to listen to your body and trust it too because your body’s going to send you signals of when you’re not feeling good.”
Reigns has also had to modify his physical preparation for his role as Akuma in the upcoming *Street Fighter* movie.
While Akuma’s muscular build allowed Reigns to maintain portions of his usual training regimen, he said the martial arts component introduced an entirely different physical challenge involving footwork, balance, body control and the ability to maintain specific positions.
“I got lucky because Akuma, his physique is kind of bodybuilderesque. He’s a big brother, so he’s very muscular. But that helped me out to kind of stay in my regiment,” Reigns said.
“But when you add in the martial arts, when you add in those different disciplines, the fighting disciplines, and being able to have your legs in a sumo squat, but then you can pop up on your toes and then also hit a unique pose with your arms. There’s so much isometric work in that. There’s so much just that body control, almost like a ballerina type of work.”
Reigns said the process included learning basic martial arts movement and footwork while working within a relatively short preparation window.
“So going through that training and going through those just different martial arts techniques and just basics too, just like learning how to move like a ninja and slide your feet and the footwork. It was pretty extensive and I didn’t have much time.”
Having grown up watching martial arts films with his cousins, Reigns said the training gave him a new appreciation for the difficulty involved in making those movements look authentic on screen.
“Me and my cousins always watched all the martial arts films and Bruce Lee movies, but I never understood exactly how hard it is and to be able to hold those poses,” Reigns said. “I mean, it’s very much like Pilates and yoga-ish, the way you have to be able to hold your body and then hold that posture in order to keep that authenticity for each discipline.”
Reigns believes his professional wrestling background helped shorten the learning curve, noting that while wrestling and martial arts require different performances, there are similarities in the physical discipline and body control involved.
“There were a lot of parallels for me to be able to transition. I mean, they’re obviously different being the different things that you’re asked to perform within wrestling and martial arts, but I think the physical disciplines have that,” Reigns said.
“They’re a little bit adjacent to each other to where it wasn’t as big of a gap for me to try to figure out. So, I think it helped me, the fact that I’m in professional wrestling and I’ve trained in this for a long time.”
The experience also left Reigns with greater respect for performers who have built careers around martial arts and stunt work.
“It really makes you go back and look at all of the great martial artists and Jason Statham and all these other guys, Chuck Norris, all these other guys and were able to do all these stunts and do all these movies and films and have it just be so good,” Reigns said. “It really just put so much respect, I tip my cap to him because it’s not easy. It really isn’t.”
